One year later.
What’s the point of being annoyed?
What’s the use of dedicating myself to purification?
“Do you understand? If you cling to the past and get angry, you will make mistakes tomorrow. This is the wisdom left by the ancient sages.”
“Isn’t that something anyone can know without looking for an ancient sage?”
“Shut up. Don’t talk back to your benefactor.”
“I’m sorry.”
The bellflower bowed its head. Dryad, the ambiguously dignified tree fairy, had been living with me ever since I arrived at Marron Castle.
Looking at the top of the bellflower’s head, moving busily around my waist, I asked calmly.
“When are you going to grow up?”
“It’s because I’m still young. But when I’m all grown up, do you know how big a tree I’ll be? I’ll have a trunk much thicker than that beautiful tree in front of me, and lots of leaves….”
As I cultivated strawberries, accompanied by the bellflower’s voice insisting on her youth despite being over a hundred years old, I started to question whether I had stepped into a novel or arrived at a countryside homestead.
In the meantime, Marron Castle has changed dramatically.
The sun was warm and the air was clear. The garden was lush and green with a few vegetables and fruits.
Cabbage white butterflies fluttered from furrow to furrow, and the sweet smell of strawberries made my nose flutter.
Could I be a bit happy?
“It was such a divine move to hold you back then.”
“Do you know how much pain I was in back then? I thought my soul was going to be ripped out of my body! I’d survived a hundred years in this contaminated land without dying, but I thought I was going to have my head ripped off and die by Hailey’s hand.”
“What else could I do? I was going to die too.”
That was Dryad’s hair back then, and what he said underwater must have been a curse word.
“But you survived because I clung to you with all the strength I could muster, and I owe you a hundred thanks.”
“If you look at it that way, I’m also a benefactor of yours, Hailey, aren’t I? Because I was purified and had the strength to crawl out of the water, you were able to grab me by the hair and get out of….”
“I stepped on a strawberry.”
“Fxck!”
The bellflower swore. I taught him a few Korean swear words, and he got better at them than me.
He looked at the strawberry I’d stepped on and crushed, then held it up with both hands and sobbed.
In the meantime, I sneakily picked the ripest strawberry and popped it into my mouth.
It was sweet and delicious. Much better than buying overpriced strawberries at a department store.
Fairies are the best, and Dryad is the best of them. A farming fairy is so much more than a talking sword or an elf friend.
“Hey.”
“What?”
“Why don’t we just stay here and live happily ever after, just the two of us?”
The bellflower crumpled its face like a princess proposed by a monster. I made a sad expression as if I was hurt, but was completely ignored.
“Axxhole.”
With that, I plucked another strawberry and popped it into my mouth. This time I covered my face with a straw hat so I wouldn’t be seen.
Black hair trickled down the hat.
The real Hailey used to have beautiful crimson hair, like a blooming rose, but when I entered this body and purified Marron Castle of its contamination, it changed to this simple color.
Hair that grew black after absorbing dark energy. I wonder if I’m going to turn into a demon someday.
In truth, what I was doing was more like eating it than purifying.
I’m not a saint who uses the power of some fancy god to purify the contamination. I’m just gobbling up a hundred years’ worth of dark energy and building it up in my body.
So I couldn’t absorb a large amount at once. At least, after daily efforts, Marron Castle, the backyard, and parts of the stone wall were restored.
“I wonder if Hailey survived like this too.”
“Stop talking nonsense.”
“I’m telling you. The demon king is supposed to appear here at this time of year. As the dark energy accumulates and accumulates, the doors of the demon’s realm open, and then terrible demons appear one by one… Then the main characters’ story starts.”
“The dark energy is being purified.”
“I’m eating.”
“In that sense, the demon king has already appeared.”
Bellflower poked me in the stomach with her tiny hand, then snatched the strawberries I had hidden in my hand with a pathetic look on his face.
“Stop eating, why do I have to explain to you every time that there isn’t enough food to go around because the land hasn’t been cleansed yet!”
“I’m hungry.”
“Eat dark energy!”
“Bad fairy.”
I stood up and walked away, not stopping my grumbling. If I wanted to absorb the dark energy, I had to go to the border.
Passing the strawberry field and crossing the potato and spinach fields, an old stone-paved path appeared. I walked along the path and stood at a location where I could see the black lake in the distance.
Marron Castle is a beautiful old castle.
It was probably even more beautiful before it was contaminated. It would have had white walls, blue roofs, and a jewel-like lake, with colored windows pouring in five-color light, and vast gardens blooming with flowers in every season.
But what was described in the book was just a cursed castle that had been eroded.
Black vines cling like leeches to the crumbling walls, everything that grows out of the ground is poisonous and kills each other, and the lake’s water is so black that it reflects nothing.
A year later, Marron Castle looked nothing like it did in the novel.
I looked alternately at the world inside the walls I had purified and outside the walls that had not yet been purified.
The difference was too much.
“Tsk.”
How could I be so lazy? Koreans like to finish everything quickly.
It’s going to take another 10 years to clean up that black lake, so let’s start somewhere else. It’s only when you can see a little bit of improvement that you feel accomplished.
Sense of accomplishment. What a sweet word. Moreover, I could restore nature from contamination with the abilities I had, without much effort.
If I keep at it, maybe one day that lake will be clean, too
I’m the one who finished the mobile farming game with grit and determination. If this were a game, I’d be squirreling away free coins while watching hourly ads.
I must have a talent for repetitive labor.
With that in mind, I turned around and came to a crossroads. The path led from the backyard of Marron Castle to the mountains.
“Purify!”
I stood at the boundary of contamination and stretched out my hand, and the dark energy swarmed around me, eager to gather as soon as I appeared at the boundary.
It was like opening a spigot at the bottom of a pool full of water.
Dark energy swirled around me.
“Come to think of it, I haven’t seen any wild berries around here. Have I missed them? No. It would be nice if another fairy appeared, a shy one good at housework. Since he’s good at farming, I’d like to have a good cook and a good cleaner….”
I was bored and talking nonsense when suddenly I felt a sign of presence.
Crack~
A shiver ran up my spine.
I was the only person around here. This vast Marron estate was filled with contaminated plants, monsters, and walking corpses.
However, between the dead trees, there stood a man.
His faded hair was tangled in a mess, his face was covered, and his skin was as pale as marble. His clothes were still intact, but his gait was unsteady.
“Argh!”
He was approaching me.
“Eek!”
I was so startled that all I could do was scream. It didn’t occur to me to run back to the castle.
All I could do was stand there and scream at the top of my lungs as he walked towards me.
“Ew! Get away from me! Why are zombies coming out of here?”
“Who are you?”
“Huh?”
The man stretched out his hand. I jerked back in surprise. His fingers fell before me.
“Where’s Hailey Marron?”
He said.
“I came to kill her.”
Then he collapsed.
“…….”
What the hell?
I stood dumbfounded for a moment, counting the days on my fingers. I didn’t have a calendar, so I didn’t know the exact date, but it had finally been a year since I’d been here.
The man had shown up.
He’s here!
That’s right. Today was the day Hailey died in the original story.
